5 ms·

In a windows environment, any reason to use Gitlab over TFS?

marpstar 9y ago
TFS (even Team Services) is lacking behind just a little bit as far as features go. Specifically, No user interface for forking repos (though I think Team Services is getting this soon).
nurettin 9y ago
I don't know, do you find any reason to use Apache over IIS?
piaste 9y ago
CI in Gitlab is one YAML file you check into source control with each project. CI in TFS is navigation through a bunch of menus. Gitlab can be fully installed as one Docker container, plus a second container if you want a CI runner (although, to be fair, it took me a while to make them talk to each other). Upgrading Gitlab is just starting a container for the new version with the old one's data. TFS is... not as straightforward. Also, cost.
0xfeba 9y ago
The CI and WebUI is eons better, not to mention just having git's diff-ing and conflict resolution (assuming you were referring to TFS proper and not git in TFS 2013+). We switched a large Nodejs project from TFS to GitLab and it's been night-and-day on our productivity.
- sytse 9y ago
  Wow, great to hear, thanks for sharing.
  - 0xfeba 9y ago
    Keep in mind, we were trying to fit the round peg that is Nodejs in the square hole of Windows build environments. It was a kludge to begin with. Luckily we swayed management.
- systems 9y ago
  I am not sure what do you mean by TFS proper vs TFS 2013+ I meant TFS + Git , the lastest TFS is TFS 2017
  - 0xfeba 9y ago
    Ok, you didn't specifically mention git in TFS so I assumed you meant TFVC.
  - Sacho 9y ago
    I've only used VSTS, not TFS on premises, but my experience is that all the "cool" VSTS features(complex work items, custom queries, kanban boards, etc) I just don't find much of a use for. These features are focused on heavy management requirements for very large teams. I can get most of what I want from work items via github/gitlab label tagging, the custom queries are only useful if you actually use the complex features of the work items, and so on. Meanwhile, the critical feature for me is a easy-to-write and easy-to-read history of discussion on a work item. This is nascent in VSTS. The description and discussion blocks don't even support markdown; The description box has its own WYSIWYG editor, the discussion block barely supports linking to work items(but http links aren't recognized, which makes it awkward to link to e.g. the code or the wiki). File attachments go in a separate tab, so it's difficult to contextualize what part of the discussion they are for. Speaking of the wiki, it was just introduced and it's pretty basic. For some reason you can only place attachments in a single special directory, which makes editing it through the repo annoying - I want to colocate my pages and their images/attached files, like you would do normally... I also have some minor quibbles like the stupid iteration workflow(add iteration to project, go to team, select project iterations for team...talk about optimizing for the edge case). I think VSTS should really replicate the github/gitlab/etc issue description and discussion page. Past that, they seem to be pretty good at keeping feature parity(the pull requests are nice, the CI is okay).
CryoLogic 9y ago
The amount of bugs my old company ran into with TFS was just astounding. Sometimes a bug would pop up that would prevent all devs from committing, and instead of patching it Microsoft would just give us a 6 page work around cheatsheet. Also we couldn't push enough performance out of it, even on it's own VPS. Once you have 50+ devs pushing to TFS it just gets slow as dirt. Some 5kb commits would take 3-5 minutes. From my own experience, I don't suggest it as I don't believe it is a well polished or reliable product.

TFS (even Team Services) is lacking behind just a little bit as far as features go. Specifically, No user interface for forking repos (though I think Team Services is getting this soon).

nurettin 9y ago

I don't know, do you find any reason to use Apache over IIS?

piaste 9y ago

CI in Gitlab is one YAML file you check into source control with each project. CI in TFS is navigation through a bunch of menus. Gitlab can be fully installed as one Docker container, plus a second container if you want a CI runner (although, to be fair, it took me a while to make them talk to each other). Upgrading Gitlab is just starting a container for the new version with the old one's data. TFS is... not as straightforward. Also, cost.

0xfeba 9y ago

The CI and WebUI is eons better, not to mention just having git's diff-ing and conflict resolution (assuming you were referring to TFS proper and not git in TFS 2013+). We switched a large Nodejs project from TFS to GitLab and it's been night-and-day on our productivity.

sytse 9y ago
Wow, great to hear, thanks for sharing.
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  Keep in mind, we were trying to fit the round peg that is Nodejs in the square hole of Windows build environments. It was a kludge to begin with. Luckily we swayed management.
systems 9y ago
I am not sure what do you mean by TFS proper vs TFS 2013+ I meant TFS + Git , the lastest TFS is TFS 2017
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  Ok, you didn't specifically mention git in TFS so I assumed you meant TFVC.
- Sacho 9y ago
  I've only used VSTS, not TFS on premises, but my experience is that all the "cool" VSTS features(complex work items, custom queries, kanban boards, etc) I just don't find much of a use for. These features are focused on heavy management requirements for very large teams. I can get most of what I want from work items via github/gitlab label tagging, the custom queries are only useful if you actually use the complex features of the work items, and so on. Meanwhile, the critical feature for me is a easy-to-write and easy-to-read history of discussion on a work item. This is nascent in VSTS. The description and discussion blocks don't even support markdown; The description box has its own WYSIWYG editor, the discussion block barely supports linking to work items(but http links aren't recognized, which makes it awkward to link to e.g. the code or the wiki). File attachments go in a separate tab, so it's difficult to contextualize what part of the discussion they are for. Speaking of the wiki, it was just introduced and it's pretty basic. For some reason you can only place attachments in a single special directory, which makes editing it through the repo annoying - I want to colocate my pages and their images/attached files, like you would do normally... I also have some minor quibbles like the stupid iteration workflow(add iteration to project, go to team, select project iterations for team...talk about optimizing for the edge case). I think VSTS should really replicate the github/gitlab/etc issue description and discussion page. Past that, they seem to be pretty good at keeping feature parity(the pull requests are nice, the CI is okay).

CryoLogic 9y ago

The amount of bugs my old company ran into with TFS was just astounding. Sometimes a bug would pop up that would prevent all devs from committing, and instead of patching it Microsoft would just give us a 6 page work around cheatsheet. Also we couldn't push enough performance out of it, even on it's own VPS. Once you have 50+ devs pushing to TFS it just gets slow as dirt. Some 5kb commits would take 3-5 minutes. From my own experience, I don't suggest it as I don't believe it is a well polished or reliable product.